The Forever War

I stumbled across some notes I'd scribbled down a few months ago after finishing Joe Haldeman's The Forever War. The novel is something of a sci-fi classic, less for its science or its story but its anti-war basis, which is largely attributed to the author's experiences in the Vietnam War. The book is diametrically opposite to the psuedo-fascist musings of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers (which it is often compared to) written at the end of the 1950s. What I noticed, quite unexpectantly however, running beside this anti-war theme was a somthing of homo subtone, which was largely ignored in my edition's introduction.

When William Mandella, the book's main character returns to Earth after a disastrous campaign agaist the Tauran enemy outside our solar system he finds a changed world. Relativistic physics means that weeks maybe months have past for Mandella but back on Earth it has been decades since he left. Earth is now a violent and impoverished planet where the global currency is based on calories. To combat an unsustainable population, the global government has introduced what are termed homosex policies. Homosexual relationships aren't now so much as tolerated but encouraged.

Mandella tracks down his mother, now elderly living with a female friend, her lover and partner after the death of his father. It is something he struggles hard to come to terms with. Back in the 1970s, he says, before leaving for the war there was a growing acceptability of the homosexual lifestyle. It was something he generally agreed with but to find his mother living with a woman: this is something different. Uncomfortable with his mother's life choices, Mandella flees to the country to find his fellow soldier and lover, Marygay Potter.

As relativistic time throws Mandella further into a distant future, he finds himself commanding an entire strike force of homosexuals. Centuries in the future homosexuality is now considered the norm, throwing his hetero-normative world upside down. Children are born in vats and heterosexuality is seen as something medically disfunctional; children who are found exhibiting these tendencies are "reeducated" early. This leads Mandella worry that his sexual orientation, his pathological attraction to women will undermine his command.

I am in two minds about this, either this is an early attempt to demontrate difficulties experienced by gay people in everyday life or it is simply an exploitative vision of the future where tolerance has led to a nightmarish disfunctional world. I prefer to believe the former although Haldeman does cop out at the end when Charlie, a sypathetically portrayed gay man chooses to be medically transformed straight. Oh well.

cocaine diaries

Alex James, ex-Blur bassist and now cheese farmer, once wrote that he had spent a million pounds on champagne and cocaine. Now cocaine-free James recently visited Colombia, the source of 80 percent of the world's cocaine, on the invitation of President Alvaro Uribe, to see first hand what his personal drug habit and that of the estimated 800,000 Brits has had on his country. Vice President Francisco Santos explained to him, upon arrival that when a "person starts consuming coke, all that money comes here to finance landmines, destruction of the environment, terrorism, kidnapping, displacement." During his visit, James met with drug dealers, farmers and members of an anti-narcotic unit, who according to the BBC website, 10 percent of them have been killed since filming in 2008. In Bogota, the capital of Colombia, James met with a contract killer, disguised as a taxi driver. Driving through the streets of Bogota, the driver told James that business was very good, making allusion to the paid killings. It's all drug related, he explained. The taxi driver was killed himself after filming.

I saw the documentary Cocaine Diaries: Alex James in Colombia a few weeks ago and it got me thinking. So much attention on part of the 'left' is paid to sweat shops, organic food, and reducing carbon emissions, of thinking globally acting locally but how many of these people use illicit drugs and how many of these people know where they came from? And again how many of them care?
I was at a party a week or so ago and I was chatting with this guy who told me he was partial to the occasional line of coke. So I told him about the film. "Yeah I've heard about it but haven't seen it," he told me, "Actually I have a friend who's constantly bugging me about my drug use for all those very same reasons and I feel kinda bad but I think I live a reasonably good life, I buy the right things and give money to charity, you know? It's just a bit of fun."

It's like the blood diamonds, I told him. Westerners with too much money, wanting something bright and shiney on their finger, whose money was used to fund a brutal civil war in Western Africa, where aputations and killings were a part of every day life. The war was sustained by there money, and in the end it was more about controlling the supply of diamonds that it was about ideology or territory or old ethnic tensions.

"What if I offered you a line, right here and now?" he asked me. "What would you do?" So I answered him as honestly as I could: "I guess I would have to think about whether the several hours off buzzing off my nut is worth more than the life of someone on the other side of the world and I hope I would say no."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/7200749.stm

the self hating homosexual

I've been listening a lot to gay troubador Rufus Wainwright of late, having bought two of his albums, Want One and Want Two at this marvelous post christmas sale at JB HiFi: two CDs for sixteen dollars. Chilling-out in my room with the lights turned down low listening to what I can only describe as theatrical folk, I was taken by the thought that I so rarely get to hear songs where the lyrics so explicitly relate to gay men in love (or out of). I mentioned this to a friend of mine while sitting round the barbeque on my balcony. "I'm not a big fan," he replied. I'll admit I was somewhat surprised, I had thought Rufus Wainwright was so him and so I pressed the issue. "A guy at work was playing one his albums off i-tunes and I thought it was kinda cool, but have you ever heard him speak? It turned me off him a little," he explained.
"What do mean?" I asked him.
"Just go listen to him and you'll understand," he told me and I did.

Watching an interview from American television on youtube, Rufus explained how he had been living in Berlin with his boyfriend recording his new album. He spoke with a slight but noticible, well I guess you could call it a "gay lisp", wouldn't you? He sounded gay.

I was reminded of a book I read while I was at University called Jewish Self-hatred by Sander Gilman. It was all about how European Jews, pre-holocaust, that were attempting to assimilate into a wider Gentile and generally anti-semitic European society. They disavowed themselves of anything Jewish, the mannerisms, the traditions, in the hope of being accepted, while at the same time criticising and even attacking such behaviour in others, labelling them the bad Jews. The thing is however, the reason why anti-semitic Europe reviled the Jews was not about how they acted, but the very fact they were Jewish. No matter how much they acted Gentile-like they would never be accepted and their future was to be like all those flamboyant and unrepentant Jews: the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.

Thinking about it, there is a similar mindset within the gay community. You can be straight-acting or camp, a good homosexual or a bad one. Dating websites are replete with references to acting straight and being indistinguishable from our straight brethren (something it seems that is both important and desirable) except for the simple fact that we like to suck cock of course. A small difference, yes? The point however, is that the reason why we are so disapproved of, feared and hated has nothing to do with a lisp or a limp wrist, it has all to do with sucking cock and taking it (or giving it) up the arse. Sure acting camp makes you more open to homophobic abuse, but since when has a victim ever been to blame for the violence of others, whether it be in word or action?

What does it matter how a person talks? I ask you. What is important, to steal from the Reverend Martin Luther Jr, is the content of a person's heart and not the limpness of their wrist. Straight-acting as a term seems loaded with self loathing, why should anyone act? While wider society may ridicule the effeminate man, it is only a symptom of a deeper unease. To say there are good gays and bad gays is a chimera; there is one thing homophobes and I agree upon and that is that they fear/hate what we do in bed not our haircut or the way we walk and talk.

home truth

I got an email from a friend last night. He was responding to an email I sent prior to Christmas and I guess I must have been moaning about work/life etc; who knows, I was probably drunk when I sent it but in his response he said: "I never remember you ever saying that you really liked it that much." I didn't pay it any heed but I guess home truths are like that: it's better not to think too hard about them, just file 'em away for later.

I lay back after finishing my poorly worded email to Julio and picked up Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. Somehow trying to understand the intricacies of warping spacetime at half-past-twelve at night is a war I can't win, no matter how many Simpson's characters Greene drags out to explain Einstein's theory of general relativity. The book dropped onto my chest and I was fast asleep...

...wobbly spacetime distortion effect...

It was my birthday and my friends and family were throwing me a big big party in the warehouse apartment that was my home (yes one can dream). Everyone was there, throngs of people... wow I didn't realise I had so many friends... and then the speeches began. My mum, close and bestest friends all saying exactly the same thing: I've been on this planet for thirty years now and done jack with it; I've amounted to nothing and by the look of it, I never will. I was ropable. How could people who professed to love me say such awful things? While tears welled in my eyes the merrymaking continued around me, drinking laughing smoking as I sat in the corner feeling sorry for myself, abandoned. As things wound down, people made their excuses and left. The night was young and apparently there was a better party to go to.

Alone now, my appartment seemed to expand and darken and grow colder as I wandered around it.... then my alarm buzzed and I was awake and I knew it was time to get up and get ready for another day at the office.

Funny hey? I'll admit I've spent most of the day thinking about this. The dream's left me with a feeling I can't shake and as a result I feel a little shaken. It's not like it was an epiphany or anything so profound like that, nothing I didn't know before but hey I guess that's why you call it a home truth.

Do we ever really leave the closet? I think as I sip tea in the house of my Sudanese friend. Years back I used to teach him english, way back when he first arrived in Australia as a refugee. He could barely speak a word of english then and now we can discuss politics, the global credit crisis or why for example I am not married. "It's important to have children, I think you should have at least six children... you need to find a wife" he tells me.

It's moments like these that time stops, butterflies fill my stomach as I experience something you might call the truth or lie reflex. I dodge and evade until I can either disclose my sexuality or ... for instance say "maybe 2009 will be my lucky year" and reinforce his belief that I am just another happy, albeit unlucky, heterosexual.

Why did I say that? I think to myself, whincing a little but with my friend's conservative christian values, I just don't want to have THAT conversation with him right now or perhaps ever. Where does that leave us though? Do I just keep quiet hoping it'll never come up? I am not normally ashamed of who I am but there are times when I just don't want to get into it. I don't want to explain or defend who I am. I just want to be one of the boys ... but then one of the boys generally means being heterosexual.

I was at a new years party, sipping a vodka mixer. I was engaged in a lively discussion about South America with me the centre of attention. I was standing about outside on the balcony having a cigarette with a couple I had just met. They'd wanted to know why I'd been drawn back to Chile so soon after my first adventure eight months earlier. You meet someone? The guy joked. I hesitated. "Yeah I met a... guy."
"Oh.... that's wonderful," the girl said with a little shock but recovering it well. "So what's his name? Where did you meet him?" I answered her questions gingerly but soon relaxed. We talked about our various opinions of men, past relationships (mainly mine) until the guy bored, up and left the conversation.... and then she sprung it on me as if she had been waiting for her moment, "so when did you come out, when did you tell your parents?"

I had to answer those same questions twice more that evening/morning until I felt like I was just going through the motions. Surely this conversation is as tired for you all as it is for me? Obviously not.

concluding comments:
I do wonder whether you can ever really leave the closet. We all have that moment in our gay lives that we can point to and say "that's when I came out," but we rarely say "that's where I briefly stepped back in," or "oh, when did I come out? Just now actually to you... and before that to that woman over there who kept touching my arm and asking me to dance."

Waiting in the lobby for a lift, listening to something appropriately blue from the ride into work, I caught sight of a guy... Michael that I used to work with a while back in the contact centre. Waiving and doing the polite thing I removed my headphones as he walked over and I slipped the i-pod into the front pocket of my backpack and said "hi."
"I refuse to buy one of those things," he said with a little distain, motioning to the silver nano as it disappeared into my bag.
"I don't know, this one's come in pretty handy...."
"No, no," he interupted, "I've got an mp3 player, I just refuse to buy an i-pod. I don't like doing what everyone else is doing, I mean everyone owns an i-pod," he said sounding like he was some fucking revolutionary. As we moved into the elevator, I thought with some irritation, it's too early for this.
"Making a different consumer choice about which electronic device you buy is hardly non-conformist." The suit in the back stifled a laugh.
"I don't like to follow the crowd," he said, as if I hadn't understood the first time he'd said it.
The doors opened on the second floor. "Well I guess I'll be seeing you," he said as he stept onto his floor. Not if I can avoid it you fucking idiot, I breathed as the doors closed.

history / tourism / grief

He read the names of those that had disappeared, those that had been abducted in the middle of the night by agents of Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia (DINA) from their families and brought here, tortured and killed and now thirty years later, in their absense, their families responded: "presente." A chill went down my spine.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a ceremony outside what had been for so many years a derelict building, known now primarily by its address: Londres 38. In the early years of the Pinochet dictatorship, opponents of the regime were being rounded up, tortured and murdered, many of them were students, activists in there twenties. AQUI SE TORTURO Y ASESINO. Here thery were tortured and murdered. For years relatives of the victims fought for recognition, every week standing in vigil outside the former DINA interogation centre that remains government property, lighting candles and pasting posters of their missing love ones on the walls of Londres 38 and every Thursday a government employee would paint over them in a dull battleship grey. On 14 October 2008, a little over thirty-five years after the democratically elected government of Chile was overthrown by a military coup, the president, Salvador Allende committing suicide as the army of Augusto Pinochet surrounded La Moneda (the presidential palace), I attended a ceremony marking the commencement of construction. Londres 38 is to be made into a memorial for those, los desaparecidos (the disappeared) that were killed by that regime.

I suppose it's moments like this where you have to wonder what the hell you're doing at something like this. Watching old women cry over sons and daughters, still living in the moment they were taken from them, you really have to ask whether you have any right to be there. When Claudia asked me if I would be interested in going, I said yeah sure, it sounds interesting but the reality was something else; was this grief tourism? I asked myself.

I recall a heated discussion that I had with Claudia and a couple others a few weeks prior while we were holidaying down in the south of Chile. We met a British couple who had been in Chile for the ski season and with that finished, were heading into Argentina. They'd stayed in the nicest of resorts, and other than the ski slopes and the occasional pisco sour they were happy to stay hermetically sealled from the rest of Chile and its history. They knew nothing about Pinochet or Britain's complicity in the deaths of thousands of Chileans and this irritated Claudia. They had come to her country without the slightest idea about Chile's past. She was right to be annoyed, but then I guess I entered Chile with only the vaguest of details. For christsake, the Lonely Planet pretty much says, Pinochet came to power in a Military Coup and some years later retired. Subtext I guess is that Pinochet is not polite discussion in Chile. However I told Claudia that there was no point dwelling on the ignorance of other people especially when this couple seemed generally shocked by what Claudia had told them. It was a far better story to tell that this British couple had learnt something and would go on to educate others in turn. So I thought anyway.

So maybe this helps legitimate my presence at Londres 38, but there are limits I think to this. As the doors opened and the relatives moved in to place flowers and to grieve, I stopped. "Claudia," I said, "I can't go in. If you want photos you'll need to take them yourself" and I handed her my camera.

Maybe I'll go back when the memorial opens.

we don't speak the same language

What is so fun about being in a relationship? You're always worried abouth them and they you, and then you're worried that their worried, and you have to figure them in to all your plans for the future, with anything that you decide directly affecting them... and then there are the arguments, the stupid little fucking arguments that blow things all out of proportions, like for example, last night when Julio and I agreed to meet at six and we both sat around for half an hour waiting for each other in the same fucking place without seeing one another. He left without calling me, pissed and when I called him he was so angry at me, where was I and what time did I think it was? I asked him the same question. When we finally met at seven he was still shitty, how is this my fault? I asked. He didn't buy into any of this mutual acceptance of blame. It was my fault. He complained that he waited around for thirty minutes in the cold for me and I din't turn up. I was fucking sitting over there the whole time, pointing to a seat opposite the metro. I told him that I was cold to and I bet he didn't get into an argument with a crazy local about the difference between frogs and toads (sapos y ranas). He didn't find my attempts to lighten the mood very amusing. We walked for a while in silence when I finally said that if he would prefer meeting up another day it was okay. He shook my hand, yes fucking shook my hand and stormed off.

I sent him this message:
Tú eres una de las pricipales razones por las que yo estoy aquí. Quiero que entiendas que estoy tratando tanto como es posible.

Loosly translated: You are one of the principle reasons why I am here. I want you to know that I am trying as hard as is humanly possible.

What else can I do?

Quick addendum: It turns out that when he said "thirty minutes", he didn't mean "meet me in thirty minutes". He was sitting round waiting for me while I went and got a coffee. This was why he cracked it. Ah... mi culpa. Woe the joys of being lost in translation.

It´s hard to remember that our lives are such a short time... when it takes such a long time

I am killing myself with every puff I take; christ I sound like a QUIT commercial! I woke this morning with the sensation that there was something there, something on the wall of my lung and no matter how much I coughed it wouldn't dislodge. Maybe it's cancer. Maybe I want another fucking cigarette!

I've been thinking a lot about the past lately, about my relationship with my father before he died. I remember when I was maybe 10 or 11, about a year before he died, we were sharing a caravan because my grandmother was staying with us and so they put her in my room and I got to sleep in a rented caravan that sat in our driveway. It was my mum's brilliant idea that my father sleep in there too. Maybe she thought it would be our chance to bond or maybe they were fighting. I don't recall.

We didn't. Yeah that pretty much sums up that week. We didn't talk, communicate, nothing, we just went to bed and slept. I remember I was reading some boy-fiction about conservationists in Africa battling poachers to save some mountain gorillas and just as my father turned the lights out, I wished that just once that he would talk to me. Did he hate me? I thought about telling him that I might be gay, then at least that would get a reaction out of him. It's funny how something so trivial, so long ago can just come up like reflux and feel so raw. I wonder though, had he known that he was going to be dead in a little over a year, how those nights in the caravan would have passed.

and so I dreamt

... that I witnessed the second coming of Christ. Yes the son of God was brought forth once more into the world to clarify I few misinterpretations of His word; this time around in the form of actor and failed singer, Mandy Moore.

Mandy, angelic and radient as always, guided our rag-tag gang of disciples around the countryside preaching His/Her word aboard a poorly maintained and disintergrating mini-bus. I can't remember too much of what this liturgy was about, soley that I kept pestering her with questions about my sexuality. "So what's the go on the whole gay thing?" I'd asked her. She promised to get back to me with an answer.

The last I heard the whole story was being made into a movie, I think I was going to be played by one of the Belushi brothers, possibly the dead one.

gay pride worldwide

Julio refused to go and it took us some time of heated and confused discussion to understand why, with all my bad spanish and his seeming inability to slow his speech to a rate that renders understanding possible. At first I thought he believed that all gay relationships were un-natural and should therefore not be celebrated and kept in secret and shame, to which I replied with some indignation: "¡NO SOY CONTRA NATURALEZA!". He clarified, it wasn't that he thought gay relationships were wrong, but wider Chilean society were of such an opinion and he didn't see how one pride march was going to anything but cement this feeling. Coming from a semi-radical background, I can't say I agreed.

I bought a book the other week that chronicles Chilean political posters of the 60s and 70s, there's one colourful print that states that "sometimes praying isn't enough" with a priest in full vestment, arm held back, taught, ready to hurl a rock. What have gay people ever gained from staying quiet? In the 1930s there was a Chilean president, Carlos Ibáñez del Campo who rounded up homosexuals in a series of systematic witch-hunts. These people were never heard from again and it is rumoured that they were thrown alive, their feet set in concrete, to the bottom of the ocean. Only fifteen years ago, in the port city of Valparaiso, a place famous for its art and cosmopolitan life style, the gay nightclub Divine was deliberately burnt to the ground; sixteen patrons died inside. No one has ever been charged.

Inroads have been made in Chile regarding treatment of their gay population. In 1998 sodomy laws were removed from the statutes and since there have been efforts made by all levels of government to improve relations with the gay community. It's not perfect, no. I have read numerous and recent reports of police brutality against gays but victims, with the assistance of groups such as the Movimiento de Integración y Liberación Homosexual (MOVILH), are making complaints against offending officers. Again I ask, what have we ever gained from staying silent?

On 27 September, I attended Santiago's third gay pride march. I can't say I understood all the speeches. There was the municipal councellor candidate, Gozalo Cid and Rolando Jimémez, president of MOVILH among others. They expressed solitarity for the gay community in Ecuador as, from what I could understand, a Bill is to be introduced that would remove expression of same-sex love from their equivalent of a Crimes Act.

Like any pride march, anywhere in the world there was music and dancing and girating and one really sexy guaso (sort of the Chilean equivalent of a cowboy) shaking his hotpanted clad booty to "girls just want to have fun" by Cyndi Lauper. And there were the drag queens, walking down the Alemada in impossibly high heels, drapping themselves provocatively infront of the presidential palace. This is what the media cover, Julio told me emphatically, not the old men holding hands for the first time in public, not the same-sex families with children or the parents who want their gay boy or girl to live without shame and guilt and fear. They ignore the long line of gay Chilean writers and intellectuals such as Andrés Perez, Pedro Lemebel and Pablo Simonetti. They sensationalise and pervert and instill prejudice.

Maybe so, but nonetheless I bought him a badge that says "No soy gay pero mi pololo sí," I'm not gay but my boyfriend is. It took him a few minutes to see the funny side but eventually he let his frown give to smile and I was content.

for all you still watching...

I leart a new word the other day from Julio: SANTIASCO. It´s a play on words, combining the name of Santiago and the spanish word for disgusting: asco. And I guess it´s a pretty accurate discription of the place; Santiago is so heavily polluted that there are days where you can´t see the mountains, the Andes that normally tower over the city. It´s congested and agressive and it´s bound to drive you crazy. I saw a stray dog yesterday, standing alone on the side of the Alhemada, barking aggressively at the traffic. I turned to Julio, and said in my very awkward spanish "this is a war that the dog can´t win." The capto-facist policies of successive governments gets to you too. Pinochet sold off almost every public service there was to private enterprise, cementing the class differences and making the user pays mentality standard in even the most basic of services.

I saw my first instance of street-crime in South America the other day, which given my summed time here is pretty fortunate considering the continent´s reputation. At first I thought they were just messing around, when the lady yelled "chucha tu madre" but when the guy kept running and the women after him, I had to reassess. Wearing sneakers versus the lady´s high-heels, the kid easily speed off; so can I say to any woman (or man for that matter) reading this, be this a lesson to you: high-heel shoes are really stupid!

But there is something else in SANTIASCO, that I am yet to fully understand, a humour mixed in with the disgust that makes the place bareable for its 11 million or so inhabitants. Is it forebearance? No, this is too restrained. I´ll have a think about this and let you know about any working conclusions I may come to.

porno

Now I guess I should preface this entry with a confession: I watch porn, gay porn. You know the stuff where men (mostly naked) touch, suck and insert their parts into other men? I mention this because before I go about moralising I should come clean. Pornography isn't exactly the most shining example of human expression there is, nor is admitting that I watch it my finest moment, but hey it's there and it serves its purpose (cough). I am not here to condemn it nor shout it down wholesale in some religious fervour, no but I do feel as gay men we are far too quick to justify questionable sexual activity with the broad brush stroke of liberalism. I am not talking here about pedophilia or beastiality videos (things that are truely indefensible) but something that at best receives little if any scrutiny and at worst general unquestioning acceptance within the gay male population. What I am talking about here is videos portraying the seduction of straight men.

There are many porn companies producing movies that portray supposed straight men performing sexual acts on themselves or on other men. In of itself this doesn't sound so bad. The gay porn industry abounds in rumours of "gay for pay" actors who are simply in it for the money and I have no problem with that, so much as it is their bodies and their lives. However there are videos that go beyond just a straight-identifying man having sex with other men. It is all in how it is presented. The website BrokeStraightBoys, for example, advertises that their guys are "...hot, they're straight but most of all these boys are broke. Real straight guys doing anything for money!" Again with the self incrimination. I have seen some of these videos or at least bits of them and and the men are made to look uncomfortable; this is part of the attraction it seems. This is not an isolated company, there are plenty of them, Seducing Straight Boys (an Australian company), god there is even a website that claims to hypnotise straight men into performing sexual acts.

This is not just about being sexually attracted to straight guys regardless of whether the men are acting or not. This is about showing men who due to circumstance are forced into performing sexual acts with themselves or others for our enjoyment, and might I say against their own nature (so-stated). BrokeStraightBoys state on their website that "Rather then lose their apartment, girlfriend, etc. they do sexual acts with other guys for some quick cash." Now I think "forced" is the imperative word here and any of us who get off on this sort of thing should do some serious introspection into their own darkened souls as to what exactly is exciting them.

Coming from a community that has fought so long and hard for social acceptance of our own sexual nature, fighting for the right to live as we are and not feel compelled to live like they do by getting married to the opposite sex and do acts we find contrary to our nature, we should not then want to see others put in the same situation, especially for our own sexual gratification. It is exploitation and it is ugly.

three days in Wilsons Prom

I can feel my muscles rebuilding themselves, the warmth emanating from my shoulders, my thighs and calves, as their fibres reform and the bruises yellow and my blisters heal. I can barely move my right middle finger, inflammed and sore from having steadied my five kilo camping tent as it swung back and forth, negotiating an outcroping overlooking the deep blue bass strait on what was effectively a forty kay hike through the Wilsons Prom wilderness.

I've learnt some valuable lessons over the past few days. Firstly, while it is nice to have a three person tent to stretch out in, a roomy ante-chamber to hang my sweat soaked jeans up in, that towered above the other hikers' pitiful one man squats, having to carry it however is another thing entirely. The words "think before you pack" ran through my head like a mantra to the rhythm of my footfalls.

A large black raven sat perched on a branch overhanging the track, watching and waiting for me to pass. My housemate, John was a good five minutes ahead of me. His waist-strap on his backpack was about to snap, forcing all the weight onto his shoulders but I wouldn't find this out for another fifteen minutes when I came upon him on the side of the track cursing the makers but for now I was being watched by the pale blue eyes of the raven. Everytime I would pass it, waiting a moment or two, it would fly on ahead of me to wait again. It kept this up for maybe a kilometre or so. I'm not dead yet you bastard! I was nearly out of water.

Here in lies my second lesson. You know you can walk for eight hours and drink two litres of water and still not need to urinate. Before setting out on our over-night hike I was only intending to take a 600ml bottle of mt franklin until John made me buy two 1.25 litre bottles at the Tidal River general store and I drank most of that on the first day. John had to give me one of his bottles on the morning of the second making us both run dry. With a little over eight kilometres to go, our canteens empty, we were brought to drinking from a small stream.

We sat there by the running water cursing our bags, our aching bodies and my poor planning as we enjoyed another smoke. I looked up at John and said "You know, for all my hurt there has not been one point where I've said to myself, I don't want to be here. This place is so fucking beautiful." John looked up at me and smiled.

As we climbed away from our oasis, exhausted but no longer thirsty we were past, going the other way, by a couple dayhiking. The woman was dressed in a long black summer dress that fluttered about her in the wind, an oaks day hat and Jackie-O sunglasses. On her immaculately manicured and pastel painted toenailed feet were bright pink thongs.

Fucking hell! How depressing.

It's been almost a month since we broke up, since I was dumped, drunk and in his house barely able to grasp what he was telling me, but then we weren't really together either and so like the war on meaning being perpetrated by one un-named superpower, orwellian goodspeak like, I wasn't really being dumped was I? I can tell, he said, that what you want is a boyfriend and I'm not really looking for that right now, my face blank with soused incomprehension. I actually had to message him the next day for clarification, saying "I don't have a clear recollection of the events last night but my vague understanding is that you've ended whatever was going on, yes?"

These three weeks now hang in some relational null space where I was denied the nomenclature, the right to definition, that my brain so needs to file and forget. He was my un-boyfriend in our un-relationship and that's about as good as I can manage. Just another un-event in my life that I can't own.

But words like "define" and "own" are bad, right? Who do I think I am John Hanning Speke? It was only three weeks after all and in my own defence I avoided words like "boyfriend" and "relationship" like they were tabu and they were. I gave him the distance I thought he wanted, and accommodated as best as I could as I explored this new world, keeping my developing taxonomy to myself (as best as I could).

It's true enough though, he had a point, I really did want a boyfriend. I had this fantasy, one that he actually suggested, where we were on a road trip heading west, sleeping by the beach in my new tent, cooking imaginatively prepared 2-minute noodles while a small pup yapped at our feet; excited just to be anywhere. But when I think about this un-dream, the dog is blurred, like a television prime-time news criminal, shifting brown and grey and then black. It stopped there, unfinished.

It is possible, I warrant that I was fixated more on the idea of being in a relationship, of wanting a boyfriend, with all these dreams and fantasies, than I was really interested in him and while I can see how the imposition of ideas upon reality is fraught with problems, the pressure it places on something new and fragile, someone was actually interested in me beyond the first night fuck and I was caught in the novelty of it all, the hope it offered, wanting to see where things lead. So for three weeks I stood confused, unsure what was really going on and then finally, three weeks later, it ended and now I am left no less confused. All I know is the un-relationship is gone and I am single again: solidly, verifiably single.

I just wrote what would be a lengthy email to my friend in Chile, in spanish no less, asking him to forgive me for not responding to him sooner, while he writes within days of mine. I've wanted to write back earlier but every time I sit at the computer I just freeze up. There are several emails that are sitting in my inbox, left wanting a reply but I just can't bring myself to ... I don't know, get my thoughts down and send them via the interconnecting fibres that are the internet. I guess that's why this blog has for the last few months become all dusty and cobwebby. Why?

One theory: When I was a kid I was diagnosed with a learning disorder, apparently one side of my brain runs faster than the other. Effectively, as my honours' supervisor said that I have a great ball handling skills but once I get to kick the goal I don't know what to do with the ball. He was one with the football analogies. I think en largesse but I can't seem to get these things down on paper. It'll be a miracle if this even gets posted.

Another theory: I am scared. I can sit in front of a computer for an hour, writing, re writing and then deleting. The voices of my imaginary audience shouting me down: It lacks flow! Your prose is cliched and forced! Why are you even trying? they cry. Writing emails is even worse. I actually know who I am writing to and I can hear their voices, their criticisms of the sad state of being that is yo. As soon as I click that send button, my words are out of control in some madcapped Derrida deconstructuralist nightmare, wreaking their own havoc upon unsuspecting friends.

I am not sure I am making sense.

Theory three: I am fundamentally lazy. Sorry to anyone who never got a response to anything they ever sent me.

obiturary

I don't normally like to comment on the shit that is reported in MX nor the lives of celebrity A lists, how they live or die, but leaving work today on my way to this internet cafe I stubbled across a copy: Heath Dead, it reads. My stomach dropped. I will admit that while I never felt he was a particularly strong actor, even his oscar nominated role as Ennis in Brokeback Mountain I wouldn't describe as unforgettable, however I liked his films good enough. Reading through the front page article I found myself absolutely disgusted, an emotion I commonly associate with this compost bin liner admittedly.

I will now quote the last few paragraphs from the article:

Reports Ledger was in an appartment owned by Mary-Kate Olsen were denied by her publicist Annette Wolf"
"She and her sister have an appartment in New York City [approximately 8.2 million people live in New York City] but they were not in this building."Wolf said.
The apartment is a six-room, three bedroom Soho loft with a monthly rent of $26,000. [Whose apartment, Ledger's or the twin Olsen's? Besides more importantly, is that in American or Australian dollars? I am looking for somewhere to live]

The article then briefly describes as a sidenote Ledger's film career.

Seriously some forms of journalism should be declared a crime against humanity.

the taxonomy of travel

Most travellers you meet enjoy offering their opinion to you on other travellers, critising anyone from tour groups, gapsters, israelis, backpackers (generally), anyone who spends less that six months in anyone given place, someone that rides anything but local transport like colectivos or doesn`t hitch-hike their way around. The list is endless and I guess they`re all trying to me that most travellers haven`t really experienced South America; they don`t know the place; they have managed to travel for six months or so and haven`t picked up rudimentary spanish. They`ve followed what is known in the biz as the gringo trail and never left it; drinking with gringos, eating with gringos and sleeping with them, barely having left the hostel to partake in said activities.

But then surely to claim to know a place is also folly: a town, a city, a country, let alone an entire continent. By learning the language and leaving the hostel yes, I agree, you might end up having a richer more diverse and colourful experience. But what is South America? I`ve been told that on more than one occasion that Santiago and even Chile is not really part of South America. It`s too expensive and the kids wear designer clothing and their parents drive european or japanese cars on sealed roads, I am told. There are no crazy stories about riding on the roof of a petrol tanker in this country, no. One Australian,Adrian and I had the misfortune of speaking with, told us that he had felt like he had left South America as soon as the graffitti had changed from political slogans (Viva Eva Morales etc) of Bolivia to the tagging of the Chilean middle class. But what are we saying here, that South America is all chicken trucks and poverty and illiteracy and Jesus shrines in taxis. That you haven`t truly been South America until you`ve bribed a cop or had a gun pulled on you. Christ the worst that`s happen to me here is a kid threw a banana peel at me in Arequipa (it missed too). Is getting to know a gay Chileno a waste of my valuable time, since being gay is not particularly South American? How can South America have only one story? How can Santiago have only one story for that matter?

Besides all this talk about Santiago being more European than South American disguises not only the self interest of your average tourist but also the fact that Chile is expensive for Chilenos too and that the wealth here is actually concentrated in the hands of very few. According to this guy I met in San Pedro de Atacama (I know great research), Chile has the second biggest gap between rich and poor in all of South America.

All this talk about knowing a place seems to me as problematic as only leaving your hotel to visit Macchu Pichu; it ringing of colonialist adventureteering.

But what is all this about: this travelling thing? Why do we feel compelled to leave our sunny shores? Is it something noble, like the desire to expand our horizons, explore strange new lands etc? Or something more base, like the freedom to act up, drink and have sex when one feels that mummy can`t see you? Maybe it`s just about saying I did it, pointing to a map and saying I`ve been here so we can say we didn`t waste our lives.

Really when you think about it, being a tourist is kind of problematic in itself. There are extremes of course such as sex tourism, but on the whole what purpose does leaving your home to seek that of another the sole purpose of your entertainment? I mean seeking out the exotic, seriously? We are truely the direct descendents of those colonial explorers, that those in camp left deride so. Is a traveller no different, sticking our fingers into everything and ruining whatever we touch?

Is there a good way to travel?

green-go

Maybe it is getting a little late to be having these thoughts, asking these questions and then ranting them at you all through what is likely to be some messy and drunken prose.


I`ve been in Santiago a week now and I find myself getting a little too comfortable. I`ve got friends here and I`ve met this chileno called Julio and well, I am not so sure what to make of that. I am supposed to hang out with him tomorrow and part of me hopes that he`ll end what I think is just a elongated one night stand.

I am just so used to rejection that it has become the less scary of the two paths.

He doesn`t speak very much english, in fact I speak more spanish, but this has so far proved less an obstacle and more of a source of amusement as he both ridicules and compliments my attempts, between our kissing como los peces.

He explained to me the other night the origins of the word gringo. Apparently at time of the conquest of Mexico, the spaniard conquistadores were wearing the colour green in their uniform and the word makes reference to that: GREEN-GO. Fuck off foreigner!

As Kermit the Frog said: "it`s not easy being green."

As the Clash said: "should I stay or should I go."

salar de uyuni

"I´d heard bad things about this Tour company, I´d been told this driver was bad and that this has happened before."

I snapped finally, "Your right Thomas, fine, you predicted this all but how does that help us? Seriously? How does this help our current situation?" The arrogant bastard finally went quiet after carrying on the entire two days with smug self satifaction, lecturing us every topic imaginable. I had clashed with him a few times, coming up against his soft fascist opinions but had generally pulled out, avoiding a front on collision. Dylan was driving the jeep now but only after Margot had confronted our driver Roberto, and we had argued between us for over half an hour in the middle of the desert 4,800 metres above sea level. Our driver was so drunk, he was swaying side to side, his eyes blood red.

Now I´d like to tell you all about the sheer desolate beauty of the Salar and the drive to the Chilean border but I am afraid the last day is likely to dominate most of my memories of it. Bolivia has such beauty and I think they are very proud of it, but what do they do with it?

"I am not getting back in there with him. I don´t care if I have to sit in the desert and wait for another jeep." She sat on the side of the road in the sand. "I am not playing with my life," she yelled at the driver in spanish. Thomas intervened, only making the situation worse as he explained how because Margot was Belgium she had higher expectations.

"You don´t like Bolivia," Roberto began to get heated and I pulled Thomas away, saying that Ruth who was Peruvian was better at talking with him.

Roberto had been up all night with several other drivers and guides drinking at Laguna Colorada, our stop for the second night. According to the guy I am sharing a room with in San Pedro de Atacama and has been travelling through South America, on and off, for more than twenty years, there has been a major problem with tour drivers for years now. He said that on one occasion an Israeli tour group fresh from military service actually tied an intoxicated driver to the roof of their jeep, taking over the driving. He is now working with one tour company to install a satellite dish and a TV in one of the major stop-offs in the hope of distracting the drivers from the drink.

"You are all stupid," he said to us, reddening in the face. I began to fear that he might actually drive off with us leaving us in the middle of nowhere with our bags still on the roof of his jeep. Now at the time I was prepared to get back in the car and risk it rather than wait in the desert, but I could understand where Margot was coming from and chose to keep my mouth shut. I was confused and totally out of my depth and my nerves were beginning to fray. Neil, the pasty redhead who burned through clothing approached me while I was standing in front of the car, hoping to disuade any drive off.

"You seem to very laid back about everything."

"Oh no," I replied, my voice shaking. "No I am not." Right then I felt like crying.

Finally another jeep arrived and that driver was able to talk Roberto down and convince him to let one of us drive. Dylan, the amiable and hyperactive Alaskan took the wheel, having some experience with mining vehicles. He actually proved best at calming Roberto, reassuring him that he liked his car and responded positively to the directions the were given between changing CDs, singing and passing in and out of consciousness.

On our way to the Chilean border we encountered another jeep, the driver knowing Roberto, agreed to take those not heading to Chile back to Uyuni. I think the reality, Roberto now awake, had started to sink in as he began to apologise to us all, his mouth full of coca and still slurring his words.

This left Dylan and myself in the jeep alone with Roberto for maybe another ten minutes to the border. Tears began to well up in his eyes as he told me that his wife was going to kill him and how his dreams of owning more jeeps and expanding were seemingly destroyed.

Now I was not angry. I actually felt sorry for him (and suppose I still do). He has a problem, a very human problem but what happened was very unprofessional and from all I hear this activity is likely to continue. The Salar de Uyuni was one of the most beautiful things I have seen since arriving here in South America and the companies in Uyuni that run these tours do a disservice to a Bolivia that hopes tourism will improve their lives.

"All it takes is an international company to come in and steal away what truely is a tourist goldmine from these small short sighted companies who do nothing but bicker amongst themselves and change nothing, improve nothing," said my room mate.